Here we go again…

Vote fraud in New Hampshire: “Major allegations of vote fraud in New Hampshire are circulating after Hillary Clinton reversed a mammoth pre-polling deficit to defeat Barack Obama with the aid of Diebold electronic voting machines, while confirmed votes for Ron Paul in the Sutton district were not even counted…”

To their credit, some of the normally self-assured TV pundits are saying they don’t know what the hell is going on any more. Until a more believable assessment of the polling disparities is provided, I’ll stick with this.

They use paper ballots. Every town counts on their own. To pull this off would’ve required a massive conspiracy of hundreds of well placed people – and Obama or Edwards would’ve raised hell if they saw voting anomalies. Thanks for playing but no.

Voter fraud? That’s laughable and the very direct defintion of voter fraud. Mrs. Gregoire vs. Governor Rossi-too bad buddy Dean Logan isn’t here this time….especially to you Roger “gov’t” cheese Rodent. Go suck an egg. What will you do without all your gov’t cheese I ask?!

It is sad, in this day and age, that we don’t trust the tally by the computers, that the repubs election abuse have distorted the system so badly, that the only thing dems trust is the slow, clumsy and awkward hand counting. Repubs still trust the computer counting because they like the results that are being programmed in.

“Some commentators suggested that Mr Obama’s New Hampshire defeat, despite opinion polls giving him a huge lead, may have been a consequence of the “Bradley effect”. Tom Bradley, a black Democratic candidate for the California governorship in 1982, was ahead in polls only to suffer a surprise upset. Political scientists suggested that some voters chose a white candidate after saying they would vote for a black one.”

I haven’t seen this much in the newspapers. Yes it’s on some web sites two to three days later after her interview on the radio. The press are so fickle. This was a story. They chose to not dig deeper!

The only “evidence” of vote fraud in New Hampshire is that the results differed from two-day old opinion polls. Since New Hampshire uses paper ballots, one can easily request a recount. Nader once did, and there was a statistically insignificant discrepancy… as there was in WA in 2004 in recount in our gubernatorial race.

Look… I’m well aware of the shenanigans in Florida and Ohio, but constantly crying wolf in the absence of compelling evidence makes it easier for real fraud to occur with impunity.

The best explanation is that there was a sort of Heisenberg effect of the polls themselves. Independants read the polls that showed Obama crushing Hillary and decided that they would vote Republican for McCain instead since Obama didn’t need their help. The numbers bear this out with 2/3 of independants picking Obama, but half of all independants actually voting in the GOP primary. This explains BOTH the Hillary win AND the surprising McCain win.

I don’t have any specific knowledge of what happened in New Hamshire last Tuesday. But lets be clear about what’s being measured in polling.

Push-Pull Polls – First, there is the expanded use of the push/pull poll. These are not really polls designed to get information, but instead financed by candidates, parties, or interest groups to use selective questions designed to change the voter’s opinion, sometimes using hypothetical questions which have little or no basis in fact (a slightly exagerated example: “would you still be inclined to vote for John Doe if you knew that he regularly beat his wife, but the news media is hiding that information”). This sort of polling isn’t reliable for reporting trends, although sometimes candidates will cite the results (but not release the backup data) in order to create the impression that they are gaining momentum in a race. These polls have no credibility for general use.

Traditional Media Polls The polls which people seem to be quoting regarding New Hampshire are the more traditional media-financed polls, which are designed to provide a “snapshot” of voter sentiment at any given point in time. Up through the 1990’s, these were very reliabel (within their margin of error), except that sometimes we forget that whenever we are taking a snapshot of a moving object, we are looking at history, not the future. Also, when you are dealing with an early primary election, they can themselves have an impact upon the election: making an “also ran” appear to be a viable candidate, or also having the opposite affect – voters can decide to swith their votes to someone who might not necessarily be their favorite, but whom they want to see continue in the race through further primaries. (An example of the later reasoning: “I really like Obama, but the polls indicate he is going to win anyway, and since I also want a woman to remain as a major candidate in this race, I’ll give my vote to Hillary this time”).

But traditional media polling has, since the turn of the century, had two big problems. The first is that the prevelance of “push/pull polling”, along with a general anoyance with telemarketers, has made it much more difficult to get a truly random sample. Secondly, and perhaps more important, is that people who rely upon cellphones and don’t even have a land line aren’t included in the surveys. Because such a choice does not apply equally across demographic lines (impacting younger and rural citizens quite differently than older and urban voters), it can skew the results – much like when the Harris telephone poll prior to the 1932 election forcast an overwhelming Hoover victory, not taking into account the poor and unemployed who couldn’t afford a phone.

Exit Polls The final type of polling to be considered is the exit poll. Studies have confirmed that it is the most reliable type of polling, usually easily verifiable by the ballot results, and it is useful for media to use in calling a victory for a specific candidate (even though only a small portions of precincts have reported), and to determine demographic trends. It doesn’t PREDICT a result, it REPORTS what happened, in a different format than the ballot box. It is reliable enough that it is relied upon as evidence of vote fraud, even by the U.S. government, when the elections of other countries is at issue.

In the 2004 election, exit polling called John Kerry the winner, but the vote count gave a narrow victory to George Bush. The pollsters couldn’t explain the discrepency, and to this date still haven’t been able to do so. They do note that the largest discrepencies showed up in Florida and Ohio, which were also the closest battleground states, and where there were allegations of substantial problems in the 2004 election process (in both states, the electoral process was controlled by Republicans).

So in New Hampshire, I wouldn’t be too worried that the voting tally from the pre-vote media polls didn’t match up with the balloting. I would be concerned, however, if there was a discrepency in the exit polling and the ballot numbers.

One thing that hasn’t been mentioned much is that the polling on Sunday was showing 17% undecided. Also, Zogby did some polling on Monday that showed Hillary pilling out in front, but didn’t release it because the sample size was small, and Zogby didn’t know how reliable the numbers were because of that. So I’d have to agree with Goldy that what most likely happened is that those who made up their minds at the last minute went for Clinton in a big way.

Oh, and Hillary actually tied Obama in NH…they each got 9 delegates. Had the polls not led us to expect Obama to crush her it would be viewed as an Obama victory since Hillary was the frontrunner in NH for months prior to Iowa.

24: yea, the media really is trying to make this into a “horse race”. I prefer Hillary (only very slightly), but I thought the “winner” banners on the news headlines were way over the top. As Edwards pointed out, less than 1% of the nation has voted, and among the top two it was pretty close. All Iowa and New Hampshire have done is identify the low-tier candidates that need to drop out and not waste any more money.

Edwards hasn’t even had a chance to prove himself in the Southern states, which should be his safe territory. By South Carolina and Florida we may find it a tight three-way race, if Edwards can afford to stay in it that long.

If Edwards does drop out, it will be interesting to see which way his supporters fall. He could end up being the kingmaker if the contest comes down to Hillary vs. Obama.

I take back my previous comment regarding the impact of pre-election polls on independants. It appears that the exit polls bore out the pre-election polls’ trendline for Obama. Of course we’ll never know because those raw data aren’t being released.

Exit polls typically have extremely low margins of error…in the .5% or less range. They are used to detect fraud for just this reason. I now would like to see those ballots hand-counted.

Somewhere in the world today Piper someone is being tortured under the orders of your brave President. This person is a terrorist according to your government. The same government you think can do nothing right Piper.Yet you Piper will not denounce the use of torture or even consider the suggestion that the person being tortured without access to habeas corpus may be innocent. Somewhere in the world Piper a person is being subjected to waterboarding, extreme temperatures, bright lighting and loud music, hung from the wall by their limbs and who knows what other evil is being done to them. This is happening 24/7! Torture is not something people can respectfully disagree about Piper. Torture is evil Piper. Profoundly and inexcusably evil! Piper. And so when I happen upon a person who enables and supports torture, like you Piper, I feel profound contempt and disgust for that person. Your President has done great harm to the very essence of this country Piper. And he has done it with the support of people like you PIPER. You support evil Piper. And you can go on and on and on with your rhetoric and straw men and quotes from Shakespeare Piper as much as you want . But somewhere Piper is a poor son of a bitch suspended from wall shackles being tortured in your name Piper, and you are as guilty of that act of torture as the torturer and the man who ordered it: Your President Piper George W. Bush.

Goldy–The numbers suggest that both Hillary and Romney pulled more votes in Diebold counted districts than they did in hand counted districts, while virtually everyone else (Giuliani got a slight bump as well) in the race, lost a point or two. Whether or not anyone tampered with the machines that counted the votes (and yes, Diebold machines were used to tally the votes and those machines are easily hacked through the memory cards), it seems worthwhile to at least look into why Diebold machines favor a few candidates to the detriment of the rest. Will you be swayed at all if the trend continues through other state primaries, and Hillary and Romney consistently have an advantage in districts that have machine counted ballots? Either way, it’s at least worth looking into now. If we are willing to discuss (and in some states implement) the rotation of the placement of names on ballots in order to make sure that undue advantage isn’t given to the names placed at the top, then surely we should be able to honestly discuss the methods we use to count the votes and make sure they don’t favor certain candidates either.

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